Latest round of Verizon layoffs at Oath affects <4% of staff globally

Verizon has initiated another round of layoffs as a result of its acquisition of Yahoo and subsequent combining of the company with its existing business property AOL to form a new division — called Oath, led by CEO Tim Armstrong. (Reminder: TechCrunch was owned by AOL which makes Oath our new parent company too.)

We understand the latest job cuts affect less than four per cent of Oath staff globally — which suggests fewer than 560 jobs are being cut in this round as it’s also our understanding that Oath has in the region of 14,000 staff globally at this point.

As well as being spread across the division’s global footprint, the job cuts affect different Oath business units — including ad sales, engineering and product development.

Yesterday Business Insider also reported that editorial staff had been affected at Oath’s UK business.

Verizon’s $4.5BN Yahoo acquisition closed in June. And just prior to that closing we confirmed that around 15 per cent of staff were being cut from the merged unit — or up to 2,100 jobs.

Adding in the latest round of layoffs, it looks like ~2,600 jobs have been lost so far as Verizon works to integrate the two businesses and merge their respective company cultures and media brands into a single, streamlined unit. No small task, clearly.

Asked for comment on the latest layoffs at Oath, a spokesperson provided the following statement:

Oath’s strategy is to build brands one billion users around the world love. We’re about four months post-close of Verizon’s acquisition of Yahoo, and we’ve made these changes to our team to further align our global organization to our 2018 roadmap. Oath remains committed to building a company talent loves and we continue to hire across our priority business units.